


If You'll Come Back

by earnestdesire



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Good Pansy Parkinson, Implied Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood - Freeform, Infidelity, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Not Canon Compliant, POV Harry Potter, Pansy is Not the Other Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 13:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16995615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnestdesire/pseuds/earnestdesire
Summary: “You know, I rather thought you’d hex me on the doorstep, Potter,” she says, and uses her wand to Vanish the tea bag from her cup. “Aren’t you angry with him?”“Furious.”She nods. “I told Draco you’d likely sleep with someone else, you know. Your ego is bruised.  You had to make some attempt to ‘settle the score.’”***This piece is inspired by a lovely little one-shot fic by RurouniHime called "No Such Thing As Perfect," and you should go and read it right now! Like the rest of RurouniHime's work, it's thoughtful and thought-provoking. I can only hope my hopeful, self-indulgent scene does the original justice.***This has not been beta'ed nor Brit-picked (more's the pity). I welcome grammar, spelling, and Brit-pick corrections!





	If You'll Come Back

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [No Such Thing As Perfect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/264625) by [RurouniHime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime). 



            Pansy Parkinson is not much for preambles.

            “What did he look like?”

            “ _Fuck you_ , Pansy,” Harry spits. But he moves aside to let her step through, into the foyer of Grimmauld Place. Harry doesn’t ask how she knows, because she probably didn’t. Not for certain. Just another of her wildly-accurate guesses, confirmed before he took time to think it through. Pansy, fully-qualified witch, is just as much a viper as she’d ever been at school.

            Harry should offer to take her cloak, spell the mud from her shoes—all the tiny acts of wizarding hospitality that Draco has been trying, in vain, to teach him for over a year.

            _A year._  Fuck.

            Pansy hangs her own cloak, humming thoughtfully. “Draco Malfoy is the most beautiful man in Wizarding Britain—”

            “Biased, Pans?” Harry snarks by rote.

            “Biased, yes. Not blind. If you got it up for anyone else, he must be _spectacular_.”

            Harry’s throat clenches, but he admits: “She definitely wasn’t Draco.”

            “ _Woman?_ Ooh, obviously. Muggle?” She raises a perfect black eyebrow at him, and Harry glares back. “Yes, she’d have to be, wouldn’t she? Draco’s was, as well.”

            Harry makes a sound not unlike a growl and spins on his heel. “I don’t want to know this, you bitch!” He stomps (or maybe staggers) his way to the kitchen, with Pansy clicking at his heels.

            “You already knew,” she says, damnably calm. “As if Draco Malfoy could have sex with a wizard who wasn’t you? The press would know before he managed to cum.”

            “God.”

            “He’ll never be able to. Not ever again. No wizard in Europe would risk your wrath.”

            They’re in the kitchen now. It’s mid-afternoon, but close enough to Christmas to be dark already. The window is a navy pit against the curtains Draco’s mother ordered from France. Apparently, all the best kitchens are French; Narcissa told Harry that, with a straight face. Draco nearly pissed himself laughing when he saw Harry’s expression.

            Pansy isn’t pushing, or babbling, because she isn’t the kind. She doesn’t _mother_ like Hermione, or try to crack jokes like Gin. She’s sly. She waits. She lets the tension build up under Harry’s surface until it explodes, cracking him wide open.

            He swallows, and beats back the pressure in his chest. “I know that. I know.”

            She makes that little thinking noise again, and takes a graceful seat at the kitchen table.

            “He knew when he agreed to go public with your relationship,” she muses, tucking her hair behind her ear. “He knew it was you, or nothing. I told him it was a mistake.”

            “This whole bloody thing was a mistake,” Harry murmurs.

            She sucks in a breath. “Don’t you _dare_ , Harry Potter! I will put you in the _ground_.”

            He turns over his shoulder, and she means it. He can tell. Her wand isn’t out, but her eyes are wide. She isn’t blinking. Nostrils flared and shoulders square. He holds that gaze for a moment, and then turns away. Flicks his hand at the kettle to start the boil. Pulls the tea from the cupboard and the mugs from the rack over the sink.

            “Draco won’t forgive me,” Harry says, quiet and raw. “Not this. I knew it, even as I…”

            “He’s a jealous man.”

            That startles Harry, and he glances back. “What? No he isn’t!”

            She smiles like a Cheshire Cat, and Harry can’t look. Again. He’s a fucking coward.

            “No? Why wouldn’t he forgive you then? It’s little more than quid pro quo.”

            Harry knows the answer she’s looking for. It’s true, so damn _true_ , and Harry can’t make himself say it. He didn’t before, and then he touched someone else’s naked body, and now… Saying the word is admitting to all the ways Harry isn’t worthy. Not anymore.

            He thinks Pansy knows. Ron would, if he were here, and Luna. Hell, maybe all of Harry’s oldest friends would know the word that’s caught in Harry’s chest. The regret, too.

            They’d know, and they’d say the word for him. They do that. If Harry had the balls to Floo any of his friends in the last two weeks, or this morning. If he weren’t an utter, utter coward.

            “Did you know,” Pansy sidesteps, because she isn’t here to make this easy on him, “Draco hasn’t spoken to Greg in 11 months?”

            “Goyle?”

            Pansy nods. “Gregory had reservations about the two of you. To put it mildly. He only got the chance to voice them once.”

            “What—what are you talking about?” The kettle whistles, and Harry pours the hot water into mugs without thinking. He never remembers to use magic for that kind of thing, not unless he’s paying attention. Kreacher’s been gone nearly as long as Harry knew him, and Draco always says—

            Harry closes his eyes. Swallows.

            “Well, he was vitriolic,” Pansy admits. “The things he said… Hmm. It was brutal.”

            “What did he say?” Harry asks. He carries the mugs to the table, setting Pansy’s down first. She isn’t smiling anymore. Her hesitation speaks volumes, because Pansy Parkinson gossips like Harry sits a broom. Effortless. Instinctual. Joyfully.

            There’s no joy in her now, as she shrugs elegantly. “It’s neither here nor there. Draco cut him off, mid-rant, and out of his life. Entirely. Although, I very much doubt Greg would have chosen to stay.”

            Harry hasn’t sat down yet, and it feels a bit like being on trial. Pansy is perfectly dressed and perfectly calm, like a barrister, and Harry is nothing but wrinkly, unwashed guilt. He scrubbed and scrubbed at himself when he stumbled home last night, ran the shower until his skin was pink enough to hurt, but he doesn’t feel clean. He feels _everything else_ , but not that.

            “You know, I rather thought you’d hex me on the doorstep, Potter,” she says, and uses her wand to Vanish the tea bag from her cup. “Aren’t you angry with him?”

            “ _Furious_.”

            She nods. “I told Draco you’d likely sleep with someone else, you know. Your ego is bruised.  You had to make some attempt to ‘settle the score.’”

            She doesn’t sound judgmental, but Harry bristles. “Fuck off!”

            “But, as you said: Draco isn’t jealous. Not really.”

            “He knows that _I am_ ,” Harry huffs, then takes a too-big sip of tea. It burns.

            “Are you?” Pansy wonders with a curious head tilt. “That’s not the word I’d use. Protective, I think. Or even _possessive_. Like a dragon protecting its hoard.”

            “My hoard?” Harry chokes out. He almost laughs. “Draco’s not a _thing_ I can _own_ —fucking hell, you Purebloods are so messed up.”

            Pansy does laugh, a little. “Indeed. Still. You can’t own _him_ , all right, but you thought you owned his _loyalty_ , hmm?” When Harry’s face falls, so does Pansy’s. He’s never seen her so sympathetic. “You thought it was something you’d earned the rights to. An immutable truth.”

            “Draco isn’t Theodore,” he tells her softly. She refuses to flinch, but Harry reads it in her eyes anyway. Something’s sparking within. “I don’t know why he did this, but it wasn’t… it was only once. He doesn’t want anybody else.”

            “He wanted him _enough_ ,” she snaps. Her eyes are blazing. “Enough to hurt you. To _risk_ you.”

            Harry gives her a moment to breathe before he concedes, “Yes.”

            They breathe together, all out of sync, as the tea cools and the night settles in the back garden. Pansy’s flush fades, and Harry’s hands stop shaking, and it’s so odd, isn’t it? Sitting here, like this, with _Pansy fucking Parkinson?_ The woman who was once the girl who would have given him to Voldemort. Certainly, when Draco told Harry that Pansy’s presence in his life was non-negotiable, Harry had reservations. He voiced them, but it was pointless. Harry could be angry she’s here, pleading Draco’s case, but that’d be like getting angry at the sun for rising.

            He didn’t know Pansy at school—not at all—but he knows her now. He knows her smell, and the scars along her forearms, and that unbreakable love for Draco Malfoy. A love that survived the worst the war could dole out, and kept them both breathing. An immutable truth.

            Draco can love that way. Immutably. The proof is reheating her tea with a quick charm.

            “None of this has ever been easy,” he tells her, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Do you know what Ginny said, when I told the Weasleys about Draco?”

            Pansy sips her tea and grimaces. “What she said to you, or to Draco?”

            Harry frowns. “What—what do you mean? What did she say to Draco?”

            “When you told her you were dating, or last week?” Pansy glares.

            “Pansy, for fuck’s sake! Stop answering every question with a question, you bloody snake!”

            “Stop asking all the wrong ones, then!”

            He glares back, and waits. He can do that, too. He has plenty of his own Slytherin to spare.

            “When, exactly, were you planning to draw the line, Harry?” She never uses his first name, and it throws him. He jerks back. “When were you planning to make a choice? Because it’s not getting better. Not really.”

            “Neville and Luna—”

            “Are good, yes, they’ve made their peace.  Well, Luna has, and Longbottom is actively trying. For his fiancé’s sake, I think. This would have happened ages ago, if it weren’t for her.”

            “Draco would have cheated on me ages ago?” Harry grits out.

            “Draco would have done something to drive you away,” Pansy says. “He needs to see—” She bites down on her lip, and Harry leans toward her on his elbows.

            “What?”

            “…To see if you’ll come back.”

            Harry slides his glasses down, pinches the bridge of his nose. Because: _Yes_. That’s Draco, isn’t it?

            “He doesn’t—” Pansy pauses again, taking a shaky breath. “He knows you won’t. Come back. He’s quite certain. People don’t, you know, as a general rule.”

            “When they get cheated on.”

            “When Draco disappoints them,” she says, nearly whispering. And then Harry can see it, like a queue at Flourish and Blott’s—all the people Draco has disappointed. All the ones who walked away. Goyle and Flint and Crabbe. The Greengrass girls. Slughorn, and even Snape. Lucius, the complete tosser, and Narcissa, too, in every way that matters.

            “It’s not enough, Pansy,” he sighs. Every-fucking-thing hurts like a rotten tooth. “You think I don’t know he’s got issues? That I didn’t see that?”

            “There were a lot of things you didn’t see, Potter.”

            “I _know_ my family doesn’t approve, _bloody hell_. I’ve been trying to talk them ‘round since day one. I don’t let them talk shit about Draco in front of me—”

            “What about in front of Draco?”

            “He’s stronger than you think, Parkinson,” Harry scowls. “He can handle himself.”

            “You bloody _moron_ ,” she sneers, shaking her head. “These aren’t strangers on the street in Diagon Alley. They aren’t Rita Skeeter, or her pathetic sycophants. This is your _family_. The people you love. How, precisely, is he meant to ‘handle’ them, hmm?”

            “Draco always gives back as good as he gets,” Harry replies, and he can’t help the little bit of pride that sneaks into his voice. He’s always liked that about Draco—his ability to take the hit, and come back harder. Draco fights back. It’s not the _nicest_ thing about him, certainly, but it’s the one thing they’ve always had in common.

             “Does he ‘give back’ when Granger has a go at him?” Pansy wonders, still sneering.  “Or George Weasley? _God forbid_ , the Weaslette. What does he ‘give back’ when Mummy Weasley calls him your _roommate_ , the great bigoted bitch?”

            “You shut your mouth about Molly!” Harry shouts, and the teacups on the rack behind him shudder dangerously.

            “Do you even _hear_ yourself?!” She shouts back, pulling her wand but letting it hang at her side. “She’s a _homophobe_ , Potter, and everyone knows it! Her own son can’t even bring his husband home for Christmas hols, and she sure as shit isn’t knitting Draco a hideous sweater this year!”

            “Maybe that’s because he _fucked another man!_ ”

            “Or maybe she can finally set you up with her friends’ single daughters, like she tries every month.” She’s spitting mad now, and standing between the table and the kitchen door. “Draco makes a _joke_ of it, you know. We’re meant to laugh. Blaise told him he should curse her knitting needles to only knit giant wooly cocks.”

            Harry snorts, but it doesn’t dull the fury. He doesn’t have his wand at hand, but he doesn’t really need it. Pansy knows that. There’s nothing she can throw at him that he can’t throw back, tenfold. Still, she quivers with angry defiance and fragile hurt and… God, Harry has been silent long enough for the words to sink past his knee-jerk defenses.

            “Shit,” Harry finally sighs.

            “ _Shit_ ,” Pansy agrees, shakily.

            Harry slides back into his chair and pulls off his glasses. “Does Draco know you’re here?”

            “I asked him if I should speak to you. He told me he’d come to you himself. That was two days ago.”

            It’s a punch to the gut. “He said that? On Thursday?”

            “Yes.”

            “My god,” Harry sighs again, and he can sense Pansy relaxing, although without his glasses, she’s just a black-and-tan blob across the room. “We’re a tire fire, the pair of us.”

            “A what?” Pansy sounds puzzled.

            “Tires. Muggle thing. I’ll show you online.” The response comes automatically, but Harry realizes that it isn’t meant for Pansy. He’s never shown Pansy anything on YouTube, or Google—not unless Draco asked him to do it. That was an answer for his… his _what_ now? His ex?

            Jesus. Harry thinks he might be sick.

            “I wasn’t going to come. Not without Draco’s permission. But then…”

            Harry slides his glasses back on. “How did you know? About the woman?”

            Pansy sits down again, setting her wand on the table with deliberate care. “It’s my business to know, Potter. And you’re not particularly discreet when drunk.”

            “Is it going to show up in the papers?” Harry asks, although he dreads the answer.

            “Not mine,” she says, with icy calm fully restored. “ _Witch Weekly_ won’t print a thing; I’ll be sure of that. But I don’t know… The other papers will hear whispers. It’s already common knowledge you’ve been living here again, though nobody’s brave enough question _why_. It may not be worth the risk, should you come after them. They’d be sure to have evidence.”

            “Is there evidence?”

            “Not that I’ve seen. There were witnesses, though.” She slides him a very disapproving look. “You shouldn’t have kissed her on the bloody street, _Auror Potter_.”

            Harry grimaces. “If anyone can identify her, it’ll be all over. Everywhere.”

            “Let’s hope they can’t,” Pansy nods.

            “I can’t—I can’t do that to him, Pans. I’m angry, I’m so—so _fucking_ furious. But I can’t make him read it in every window of Diagon Alley! _The Howlers_. Oh bloody hell, Pansy, the fucking Howlers—”

            “Blaise has been screening his mail,” she murmurs. “Since you left.”

            “Oh thank god!” Harry actually laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. I can’t believe I left him there, with no one to—”

            “You left him because he fucked around,” she reminds him, still cool and calm.

            “ _I know_ ,” Harry gasps. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t still—” He stops. Swallows.

            “Still what, Harry?”

            _Harry_. It’s a shove to the chest, again, and it makes him blink back tears. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and even so, he can hardly force the whisper through his teeth.

            “How can I still love him? How the _hell_ can I still love him this much?”

            If it were anyone else—Hermione, or Ron, or even Luna—Harry could never have gotten the question out at all. It _hurts_. It’s pathetic, and more than a little self-destructive, to be using the word ‘love’ for the first time only _after_ he’s had his heart broken.

            But Pansy doesn’t react much, beyond folding her hands on top of the battered table. Harry wasn’t dating Draco yet when Theodore Nott cheated on Pansy with a Ravenclaw girl just out of Hogwarts. It had been the scandal of the year— ** _The_** _**Slytherin Sweethearts: Infidelity Shocker!**_ Pansy never gave a single interview, not even to her own magazine. Theo was kind about Pansy in the press, Harry remembers. Very repentant. But Pansy isn’t the sort to forgive.

            Is Harry? _Could_ he?

            And now… _God_ , would Draco?

            They’re a disaster, honestly. Draco is brilliant, and, yes, prickly and a little dangerous, but also… Sexy. Warm. _Loving_. Harry can hardly say the damn word.

            Pansy still hasn’t responded. Harry’s question hangs in the air like fog.

            “I’m going to have to go to _him_ , aren’t I?”

            Pansy narrows her eyes, with that thoughtful little hum.

            “It’s—It’s the only way. The only way he’ll know, for certain, that I might come back. If he comes to me, and then I tell him I—” Harry chokes a bit. Breathes through it. “If I tell him what I did, he’ll never _believe_. That I won’t leave him. That I would _choose_ him.”

            Pansy leans forward slightly, her voice dropping low. “What did she look like, Harry?”

            He swallows, but his voice still comes out strained. “To be honest? It _really_ didn’t matter.”

            “I see.” Pansy blinks at him, weighing something before she goes on. “You should know then: Draco couldn’t tell me the color of his eyes.”

            And this is it— _this thing_ , this one stupid, _horrible_ thing finally cracks Harry’s ribs open at the kitchen table. He sobs. It’s messy, and noisy, and so completely unlike him that he thinks he might’ve actually lost his fucking mind.

_“I recognized you on the Hogwarts Express, first year.”_

_“I assume so. You came up to pick on Ron, and offer me your hand.”_

_“Yes, yes, I was a prick and you were self-righteous, story of our bloody lives, Potter! But there were rumors going around the train, and I knew it had to be you. From that day at Madam Malkin’s.”_

_“How’d you know that?”_

_“Ah, well, Potter, I’m not sure you’ve ever noticed, but you have the most incredible eyes…”_

            Pansy’s voice, returned to business-like smoothness, pulls Harry back to the present. “He thinks you’re at an inn somewhere, you know.”

            Harry shrugs, wiping the tears and snot from his face with his sleeve. “He knows how I feel about this place.”

            “Why did you come back here, then?”

            “It’s… well, it’s _mine_ , isn’t it? My home?”

            She raises a brow, but it’s as clear as speaking aloud: _Oh, is it?_

            “I need to clean up,” Harry says, grabbing the mostly-full mugs. “I need to go see him. Tonight.”

            “One more thing…” Harry pauses halfway out of his chair. Pansy manages a weak smile. “Why haven’t you told anyone, Potter? There’s no way Granger or the Weasleys would’ve kept this quiet.”

            Harry winces, because it’s painfully true. His family would’ve jumped at the chance to vilify Draco for his infidelity. And now that Harry’s thought about it, that is so… so horribly _wrong_. They’d be gleeful, in their way, to finally put paid to their doubts and their suspicion.

            “It’s nobody's business but our own,” Harry finally replies. Pansy sighs, standing. She tucks her wand into her sleeve and waits while Harry sets the mugs to wash in the ancient sink.

            “I truly hope you’re able to forgive one another,” Pansy says as they return to the front hall. Harry’s jaw clenches. “The pair of you—it makes sense. I still don’t really know why.”

            “Compatibility,” Harry mumbles while she fastens her cloak. “Opposites attract, I suppose.”

            “No,” she frowns, tilting her head. The light from the flickering lanterns slides across glossy black hair and illuminates her cheekbones. He remembers thinking her ugly, back at Hogwarts, and he can’t imagine it now. But then, he’d told himself Draco was ugly once, too.

            “No?”

            “No, Potter. You’re more alike than I could’ve ever imagined.”

            Pansy doesn’t offer a hand, or hug him, or kiss his cheek (god forbid). Just smiles that small, secretive smile and lets him pull the door open for her. He casts a wordless, wandless Warming charm over her small form, and she nods her thanks.

            “Goodnight, Pansy.”

            “Good luck, Potter.”

            He wants to delay—to watch her walk away into the inky November night. To sit in his depressing kitchen, drinking firewhiskey. To _stew_. But this isn’t the time, and that isn’t who he is. Harry Potter doesn’t delay the inevitable, not even when it hurts. _Especially_ when it hurts.

            Draco is at home _(at home)_ , with his reading glasses and his slithery silk pajamas. Maybe he’s on the living room sofa, curled up, exactly where Harry left him. Is he drinking? Is he crying?

            Enough of that. _Enough, Harry_.

            He climbs the creaking stairs toward his bedroom, two at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone has a different reaction to infidelity, and different standards for faithfulness and forgiveness in their relationships. This is a work of fiction. Harry's thoughts/opinions/reactions aren't mine. Neither are Draco's, nor Pansy's. That said, I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!


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